This page gathers the 100 dictionary entries of which at least one sense is labelled “Particle” by Wiktionary. The definition shown is that sense; each word leads to its full entry.
- -onium suffix Designating an onium particle.
- alphabet soup noun A physical state in which there is a miscellany of different particles, often designated by letters.
- annihilate verb To react with antimatter, producing gamma radiation and (for higher-mass reactants, especially composite particles such as protons) lighter…
- anti- prefix Composed of antimatter.
- antiatomic adj Of or pertaining to antiatoms.
- antiblue adj Describing one of the three possible colours of an antiquark, corresponding to blue in a quark.
- antihydrogen noun The antimatter equivalent of hydrogen, consisting of an antiproton and a positron (antielectron).
- antihyperhydrogen noun The antimatter form of hyperhydrogen; a variant of antimatter hydrogen where the antinucleus contains an antiproton and atleast one…
- antihypertriton noun The antiparticle equivalent of a hypertriton, consisting of an antiproton, an antineutron and any antihyperon
- antimaterial adj Composed of antimatter.
- antiparticle noun A subatomic particle corresponding to another particle with the same mass, spin and mean lifetime but with charge, parity, strangeness and…
- Askaryan effect noun The phenomenon whereby a particle traveling faster than the phase velocity of light in a dense dielectric (such as salt, ice or the lunar…
- axion-like particle noun A hypothetical light boson that behaves somewhat like the axion but does not need to satisfy the axion's original theoretical constraints.
- baryon noun A heavy subatomic particle created by the binding of quarks by gluons; a hadron containing three quarks. Baryons have half-odd integral…
- baryonium noun A particle-like resonance preferentially coupled to baryon-antibaryon channels. It is described either as a baryon-antibaryon compound or…
- beauty noun A beauty quark (now called bottom quark).
- blue adj Having a colour charge of blue.
- boson noun A particle with totally symmetric composite quantum states, which exempts them from the Pauli exclusion principle, and that hence obeys…
- bottom noun Ellipsis of bottom quark.
- bottom quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of -1/3 and a mass of about 4,100 to 4,400 MeV.
- bound state noun A composite of two or more particles that behaves as a single particle.
- charged particle noun Any particle, especially a subatomic particle, that carries an electric charge.
- charm noun A quantum number of hadrons determined by the number of charm quarks and antiquarks.
- charm quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of +2/3 and a mass of about 1150 to 1350 MeV.
- color charge noun In the Standard Model of particle physics, a property possessed by quarks, antiquarks, and gluons that determine rules for how these…
- dark matter noun Matter which has mass but which does not readily interact with normal matter except through gravitational effects.
- down quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of -1/3 and a mass of about 4 to 8 MeV.
- electron noun The subatomic particle having a negative charge and orbiting the nucleus; the flow of electrons in a conductor constitutes electricity.
- eta noun A kind of electrically neutral meson having zero spin and isospin.
- exotic hadron noun Any hadron not permitted by the quark model but allowed by the more general theory of quantum chromodynamics, including hybrid mesons…
- Faddeev-Popov ghost noun An extraneous field introduced into gauge quantum field theories to maintain the consistency of the path integral formulation.
- familon noun A hypothetical Nambu–Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of a global family symmetry that distinguishes between…
- fermion noun Any elementary or composite particle that has half-integer spin and thus obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics and the Pauli exclusion principle…
- flavor noun One of the six types of quarks (top, bottom, strange, charmed, up, and down) or three types of leptons (electron, muon, and tauon).
- force of nature noun A fundamental force.
- frozon noun A proposed type of theoretical particle, a Planck-scale particle with Planck energy, whose field fluctuations are frozen in time due to…
- ghost condensate noun The proposed situation in which a ghost (an excitation of a field with a wrong sign of the kinetic term) acquires a vacuum expectation…
- gluon noun A massless gauge boson that binds quarks together to form baryons, mesons and other hadrons and is associated with the strong nuclear force.
- graphino noun A massless charged relativistic quasiparticle that arises from the low-energy excitations in a 2D graphene sheet interacting with an…
- graviphoton noun a hypothetical particle that emerges as an excitation of the gravitational field but whose physical properties are virtually…
- graviton noun A hypothetical gauge boson that regulates the gravitational force. It would have a spin of 2 and zero rest mass.
- green noun One of the three color charges for quarks.
- hadron noun A composite particle that comprises two or more quarks held together by the strong force and (consequently) can interact with other…
- Higgs boson noun An elementary particle in the Standard Model, namely a boson with zero spin, that gives mass to other particles.
- holon noun One of three kinds of quasiparticle (the others being the spinon and orbiton) that electrons in solids are able to split into during the…
- inert antineutrino noun A hypothetical antineutrino that interacts only very weakly or not at all with normal matter except through gravity.
- intermediate vector boson noun Any of the three fundamental particles (the two W-bosons and the Z-boson) that transmit the weak nuclear force and have a mass about 100…
- J/psi particle noun A subatomic particle with an unusually long lifetime (7.2 × 10⁻²¹ s) and a large mass (approx. 3.097 GeV/c²); a bound state of a charm…
- kaon noun any of four unstable subatomic particles, mesons, they are a combination of a strange quark or antiquark and either an up or down quark or…
- lattice theory noun (A) lattice gauge theory.
- lepton noun An elementary particle that has a spin of 1/2 (i.e., is a fermion) and does not interact via the strong nuclear force; examples include the…
- magnetic monopole noun A hypothetical particle having an isolated north or south pole; the magnetic equivalent of an isolated electric charge.
- meson noun An elementary particle that is composed of a quark and an antiquark, such as a kaon or pion. (Mesons composed of rarer quarks are much…
- neutron noun A subatomic particle forming part of the nucleus of an atom and having no charge; it is a combination of an up quark and two down quarks.
- nuclear response function noun A relationship that describes the probability of a particle that collides with another being scattered in any particular manner
- orbiton noun A quasiparticle, corresponding to the orbital energy of an electron, which can result from an electron apparently ‘splitting’ under certain…
- pentaquark noun Any of a class of subatomic particles (previously hypothetical, since detected, subject to confirmation) consisting of a group of five…
- PeVatron noun An astrophysical particle accelerator capable of energizing cosmic rays to PeV (“peta-electron-volt”) power levels.
- photon noun The quantum of light and other electromagnetic energy, regarded as a discrete particle having zero rest mass, no electric charge, and an…
- pion noun Any of three semistable mesons, having positive, negative or neutral charge, composed of up and down quarks/antiquarks.
- proton noun A positively charged subatomic particle forming part of the nucleus of an atom and determining the atomic number of an element, composed of…
- pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson noun A light scalar particle that arises from the spontaneous breaking of a global continuous symmetry, but with an additional small explicit…
- quark noun In the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are…
- quasiparticle noun Any entity that has some characteristics of a distinct particle, but comprises a grouping of multiple particles
- red noun One of the three color charges for quarks.
- sbottom squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of a bottom quark.
- scharm squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of a charm quark.
- sdown squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of a down quark.
- snark noun A fluke or unrepeatable result or detection in an experiment.
- spinon noun One of three kinds of quasiparticle (the others being the holon and orbiton) that electrons in solids are able to split into during the…
- sstrange squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of a strange quark.
- sterile antineutrino noun A hypothetical type of antineutrino that does not interact by means of electromagnetic, strong, or weak nuclear forces, but only through…
- sterile neutrino noun A type of neutrino (and potentially dark matter), that may be supermassive, which has right-handed chirality, and only interacts with other…
- stop squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of a top quark.
- stopping power noun The retarding force exerted on a high-energy particle by interactions with the medium through which it passes.
- strange noun A strange quark.
- strange quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of -1/3 and a mass of about 80 to 130 MeV.
- strangeness noun One of the quantum numbers of subatomic particles, depending upon the relative number of strange quarks and anti-strange quarks.
- strangeon noun A particle composed of strange quarks, down quarks, up quark. A strange cluster with three-light-flavor symmetry.
- strongly interacting massive particle noun a candidate type of dark matter composed of particles that only interact through the strong nuclear force, one of the fundamental forces of…
- sup squark noun A squark which is the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of an up quark.
- super weakly interacting massive particle noun a candidate type of dark matter which are weakly interacting massive particles that result from supersymmetry, being supersymmetric…
- tachyon noun A hypothetical particle that travels faster than the speed of light.
- tau noun Ellipsis of tau lepton or tau particle (“an unstable elementary particle which is a type of lepton, having a mass almost twice that of a…
- top noun A top quark.
- top quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of +2/3 and a mass of about 178,000 MeV.
- toponium noun Any hypothetical meson formed from a top quark and its antiquark; would be very unstable because of the large mass of the top quark
- triton noun the nucleus of a tritium atom, consisting of a proton and two neutrons.
- up noun An up quark.
- up quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of +2/3 and a mass of about 1.5 to 4 MeV.
- upsilon noun An upsilon meson, or bottomonium.
- upsilon particle noun Any of a number of bound states of a heavy quark and its antiquark, especially that formed from a bottom quark and an anti-bottom quark.
- V particle noun Any heavy, unstable subatomic particle that decays into a pair of particles, thereby producing a characteristic letter V in a bubble…
- venitive adj Indicating motion to or toward a thing.
- vertex noun An interaction point.
- virtual adj Pertaining to particles in temporary existence due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
- W-boson noun a fundamental particle, a gauge boson, that, together with the Z-boson, mediates the weak nuclear force; it has a charge of ± 1
- wimpzilla noun A theoretical superheavy dark matter particle, trillions of times more massive than other proposed types of dark matter.
- xi noun Either of a pair of hyperons having spin 1/2, which decay into a lambda particle and a pion.
- Z-boson noun a fundamental particle, a gauge boson, that, together with the W-boson, mediates the weak nuclear force; it has a charge of 0